PSV: WALKING DEAD: SEASON TWO (GAME)

The Walking Dead: Season Two continues the story of The Walking Dead and is based on the comic books (not the TV series) of the same name. Everyone becomes a zombie, called "Walker", after death (at least when the brain is still intact) and the series follows people in their attempts to survive. Just like the source material, the game is less about fighting zombies than showing how the survivors react to their situation and interact which each other.



Besides a small intro portion, the story is set over a year after the happenings of the first game. Clementine initially travels together with Omid and Christa, but due to unfortunate circumstances she soon has to survive on her own and has to find new people to trust. The player takes the role of Clementine, but regarding gameplay - with the obvious difference that the girl is not nearly as strong as the previous protagonist Lee is more often on the defensive - the mechanics are largely unchanged compared to the predecessor.



One of the main pillars of the game is making choices: in each episode, there are many decisions to make which influence how the remainder of the game plays out; the consequences may range from small to big (e.g. the death or survival of other characters). Those decisions, including Clementine's answers in conversions, have to be made within a time limit. The game also reacts to some decisions made in the first game when a savegame is imported.



Sometimes Clementine has the opportunity to explore a small areal and interact with items or people in order to reach her next goal or just to learn more about the situation. Here the game uses a mix between the direct movement of the character and using a cursor to choose an item to interact with: after hovering over an object, a list of possible actions (e.g. looking at, taking the item or using another item in Clementine's possession) pops up. However, in comparison to the predecessor, the puzzle-solving aspect has been almost completely removed; proceeding is usually only a matter of interacting with all needed items and persons. The frequent action sequences play out in quick-time events (the player has to press respectively hammer the buttons which are displayed on the screen or click on the correct spot on the screen under time pressure); in other cases, there are mini-games of the same complexity to solve.



On Macintosh and Windows, the episodes were only available as a full package containing all five episodes. On the release date, players gained access to Episode 1: All That Remains while the next episodes were provided as patches over the following months. For the later PS4 and Xbox One versions, all episodes were available right away as a single package. For the PS Vita, all episodes were initially released separately and later as a single package. On other platforms, the later four episodes were released separately as DLC (download content) for the first episode. The included episodes are:

The Walking Dead: Season Two - Episode 1: All That Remains

The Walking Dead: Season Two - Episode 2: A House Divided

The Walking Dead: Season Two - Episode 3: In Harm's Way

The Walking Dead: Season Two - Episode 4: Amid the Ruins

The Walking Dead: Season Two - Episode 5: No Going Back